Convert subscription to lifetime membership

Question

SergioPrado OP

Created Mar ’18

Replies 6

Boosts 1

Views 7.8k

Participants 5

(I've seen a number of other people ask about this, but no one seems to respond to the questions, not totally sure why)

Pretty straightforward situation: I have an annual subscription in my app now. I would like to add a lifetime membership that a user can buy that will replace the annual subscription, but that does not appear to be possible since 1) I can't cancel their old subscription directly, and 2) the lifetime membership can't be a subscription (since it's a one-payment lifetime purchase) and so can't be part of the same subscription group.

Has anyone encountered this/does anyone have a solution? Any tips would be super helpful.

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Answer 1

PBK OP

Mar ’18

Why not just make the lifetime subscription a non-consumable IAP upgrade. And alert anyone who purchases an upgrade, who also has an autorenewable subscription, to cancel their autorenewable subscription.

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Answer 2

SergioPrado OP

Mar ’18

Thanks for the response!

So that would be great in an ideal situation, but based on my experience with users and upgrades, 100% guaranteed we will get a lot of 1-star reviews because people won't notice/will forget/will ignore the notifications and then be angry with us over the extra charge. There isn't an automated approach available via Apple APIs?

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Answer 3

KMT OP

Mar ’18

Either sell subscriptions, or sell lifetime content outright - pick one.

If being able to sell a lifetime subscription is something you'd like Apple to provide, feel free to make an enhancement request via the bug reporter, below right, adding your report # to the thread for reference.

Good luck.

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Answer 4

PBK OP

Mar ’18

You can not show the non-consumable IAP to any user who has an autorenewable subscription - tell them that they can purchase a lifetime subscription only if they end their autorenewable subscription and allow it to expire. You can not show the autorenewable subscription to anyone who has a lifetime subscription.

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Answer 5

NicPic11 OP

Mar ’23

Bc it was once offered for anyone lucky to realize its significance. It was quite a long time ago now and it was $100 bucks that scored you free downloads. Which then turned into Apple Music and a lifetime subscription. I only remember this bc one of my friends did it. When it was offered, nobody realized how amazing it turn out to be. I think it was prior to Apple Music monthly subscriptions and you paid to download songs or albums to yourself iTunes library. Again, it was some time ago.

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Answer 6

dr2050 OP

Jan ’24

Thanks for posting this. Really called out a problem with offering a lifetime, non-consumable IAP along with subs.

The way I will handle this is, and note that my subs go by device (so iPad only, or iPhone only, or iPad-iPhone etc.):

To the user it will look like it's part of the subscription group
If they have an active subscription on the current device... then they can't purchase anything so that's fine.
If they have no active subscription then they can purchase from the group
If they have an active subscription but it's NOT valid for the current device, they would need to crossgrade. Show an alert explaining that they need to cancel their sub first.

"100% guaranteed we will get a lot of 1-star reviews because people won't notice/will forget/will ignore the notifications and then be angry with us over the extra charge." True. Definitely don't sell a thing contingent on some later action. Don't sell the thing until they unsubscribe.

And then you might lose them, so

If they have an active subscription but it's NOT valid for the current device, they don't see the lifetime option.

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